Faenza

Faenza is a municipality in the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, with 58,746 inhabitants as of July 2025. Founded by the Romans as Faventia in the second century BC, it passed from Charlemagne to the Papal States in 774, was consolidated by the Manfredi family in the Middle Ages, and came under direct papal control in the sixteenth century before becoming a prominent Neoclassical center in the eighteenth and nineteenth. The city is renowned worldwide for its production of artistic ceramics, its own name having given the term faience to the tin-glazed pottery it made famous, and it earned UNESCO Creative City designation for Crafts and Folk Arts in October 2025. Its International Museum of Ceramics, Neoclassical landmarks including Palazzo Milzetti and Teatro Masini, and the annual Palio del Niballo medieval jousting tradition sustain the city's reputation as the City of Ceramics.